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c#sql-servervb.netwinformswebview2

Set Webview2 Source directly to a binary stream


I have a Webview2 Control in my application, used to view PDF documents.
The application also stores to and reads from MS SQL server PDFs data.

Currently, I am retrieving binary data from SQL, convert them to a temporary file to disk and set:

webview2.source = New Uri("file://" + filename)  

That's working fine so far, but of course I would like to do the job without writing and reading to and from disk.

Is there a way to do the same without accessing the disk?

Update (as recommended), what I tried. With part of code for better understandg:

                Dim fieldOrdinal = reader.GetOrdinal(ColumnName)
                reader.Read()
                Dim blob = New Byte(reader.GetBytes(fieldOrdinal, 0, Nothing, 0, 0) - 1) {}
                reader.GetBytes(fieldOrdinal, 0, blob, 0, blob.Length)

                Dim pdfBase64 As String = Convert.ToBase64String(blob)
                Dim html As String = "<!DOCTYPE html><html><head></head><body><div>" & $"<iframe width=100% height=500 src=\" & Chr(&H22) & "data:Application/pdf;base64,{pdfBase64}\" & Chr(&H22) & ">" & "</iframe></div></body></html>"

The webview2 control shows a frame, but without content

Final Update: Here the (correct) to VB translated and working code:

Dim html As String = "<!DOCTYPE html><html><head></head><body><div>" & $"<iframe width=100% height=500 src=""data:Application/pdf;base64,{pdfBase64}"">" & "</iframe></div></body></html>"

Solution

  • You can embed the PDF in an IFRAME as Base64, the same way you embed images.
    In this case, the mime type is of course application/pdf.
    Convert to Base64 your source PDF bytes with Convert.ToBase64String(), use a standard HTML5 header and set the IFRAME and/or DIV container to the desired size.

    Use the WebView2.NavigateToString() method to load the HTML with the embedded PDF:

    • See the Remarks section: currently the content's size cannot exceed 2097152 bytes (2MB)
    string pdfBase64 = Convert.ToBase64String([Your PDF bytes]);
    
    string html = "<!DOCTYPE html><html><head></head><body><div>" +
        $"<iframe width=100% height=500 src=\"data:application/pdf;base64,{pdfBase64}\">" +
        "</iframe></div></body></html>";
    
    webView2.NavigateToString(html);
    

    VB.Net version:

    Dim pdfBytes = [DataReader].GetSqlBytes([DataReader].GetOrdinal("[Column Name]")).Value
    Dim pdfBase64 As String = Convert.ToBase64String(pdfBytes)
    
    Dim html As String = "<!DOCTYPE html><html><head></head><body><div>" &
        $"<iframe width=100% height=500 src=""data:Application/pdf;base64,{pdfBase64}"">" &
        "</iframe></div></body></html>"
    
    webView2.NavigateToString(html)
    

    The iframe size should not be set like that, you should use CSS styles (and probably a simple JavaScript to handle late redefinition of the size of the Window that contains your PDF).
    You could build a simple HTML template and fill the Base64 content as described.